Where is my hard drive space going?

[Parakarry]

Ok so weird thing.
Around a month and a half ago I notice that I have 8GB free on my computer's hard drive, out of 250GB. Huh, that's weird. Well I know I don't download loads upon loads of giant files, so I should be ok. I even cleared out my Recycle Bin.
But the free space kept shrinking! It got to the point that I had less than 1GB free, and even less later on!
I KNOW I don't get gigantic files that size in a month, what could be going on? I've cleaned my Chrome Browsing history but no idea where else this is coming from.
I even intend to buy a 2TB external hard drive soon just to move things I don't always use.
The other day I even cleared out some videos of episodes of a Nick show that I've had for years and don't really need, clearing hundreds of MB. But the space is going to shrink more.
What could be going on?

[HylianDev]

I'm in mobile but there should be a software that breaks down your directories by size

Hylian's day job, little did we know, was saying controversial things on the internet.

you fool!!!! you fixed it wrong!!!!

Bibby Team

[VinnyVideo]

You might want to try CCleaner - it's good at finding old temporary files.

Course clear! You got a card.

[Parakarry]

Holy sh*t.
Well there's your problem.

How the f come HALF MY COMPUTER IS TEMP FILES
I mean what are those?
And I even skipped Chrome cause I'm using it. That must be even more!

[Catonator]

Here's what to do:
- Press the windows key + R to open up the run program.
- type in "%localappdata%" without the quotes into the run prompt and click OK.
- It will open a folder, find a folder named "Temp" inside it.
- Open the folder and delete EVERYTHING inside it. Don't worry, it has nothing important unless something is really messed up.
- If the deletion process complains about some files being in use, just skip them.
- Clear your recycling bin.
This might help you.

Another thing you can do is:
- Open up My Computer
- Right click the hard drive with space problems
- Select "properties"
- Click "Disk cleanup"
- Once the window opens up, press "OK"
Follow some good instructions online for better understanding of what you're deleting using it.

You should also look into a program called WinDirStat. I might help you figure out what's taking up a lot of space on your PC. You might have unexpectedly large files, or just stuff you've completely forgotten about.

Catonator.net | Twitter | YouTube | Soundcloud | Bandcamp

 
signatures are hard pls listen to music thxbye

[Hyper]

Another useful software to troubleshoot disk usage: Space Sniffer.

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Main Site | YouTube | Bluesky | My OC

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[VinnyVideo]

Many programs can create massive temporary files. For example, I've noticed that Windows Movie Maker can generate several gigabytes' worth of temporary files when rendering a long video.

If hard drive space is getting low, I recommend running CCleaner on a regular basis.

Course clear! You got a card.